My most romantic weekend happened 11 years ago in Brush. People have a hard time believing this, but then, people tend to be snooty about the Eastern Plains, on the premise that what they contain is nothing.

First of all, it’s not true, but even if it were, what’s wrong with nothing? I grew up near the ocean. Empty space makes me happy.

So I try to explain: Brush had all that space, a motel with orange shag carpet, the smell of lilacs (it was spring) and the fact that historically, it’s always been more freewheeling and less law-abiding than its neighbor city, Fort Morgan.

People are supposed to fall in love against dramatic backdrops – places with their own personalities, like Prague. But being in Brush was more like renting a really cool building for a surprise event. Go ahead, the town seemed to say, let ‘er rip! Don’t mind us!

Also, we had a really good, really cheap, steak dinner – at a feedlot. Could that possibly be right?

It was worth trying to re-create, and easy to relocate the man in question, since I married him nearly 10 years ago. Our two children were away for 24 hours. Did we still know how to have fun? In Brush?

Make that … Brush!

Officially, the city spells its name with an exclamation point, ever since Rob McClary, a city manager, thought it up 25 years ago.

“He did it for uniqueness,” says city clerk Cathy Smith. “I don’t think any other city around here includes punctuation.”

In Brush!, old roses bloom on every fence, Mexican restaurant/bars are abierto! ahora mismo! and the SunBlest greenhouse cranks out hydroponic tomatoes, under heavy security, ever since 9/11.

The beautiful old Central School has been boarded up but nominated for the National Historic Register, and if someone starts writing grants with a vengeance, it can be turned into apartments, city offices – the kind of thing that keeps downtowns from vanishing into clouds of dust. Which is what appears to have happened to the orange-carpet motel.

But one night of camping is free at Brush’s Memorial Park. This deal has stood as long as anyone can remember, because it’s friendly, and summer is the time to do it.

Doty Ponds, across the street, are stocked with fish, the picnic shelters feature barbecue cookers large enough for a Cajun family reunion, the old Knearl schoolhouse has been turned into a cattle drive museum and no one cares if you drink beer at the campground.

When it gets hot, you can walk over to the town pool. That’s another reason I like the plains: There’s always a pool in summer, and it’s always open. A couple of teen boys are always engaged in cannonball contests; the skinny one always loses. Brush! is no exception.

The feedlot restaurant turns out to be Drovers, a restaurant inside the High Plains Livestock Exchange, which is not a feedlot, but a place where cattle are auctioned.

But this much is clear – where you find a large bunch of live bovines, you usually find a good steak, as well as homemade pie. I’m not sure a cow person would stand for anything less.

“It’s true,” confirms Brush! mayor Steve Treadway, who has officed in the Livestock Exchange for 26 years. “You get big farm-style dinners. A lot of German families settled this area, and working those sugar beets took a lot of food. They expect mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, roast beef, all as part of their everyday food.

“Although they’re also doing Spanish food these days,” he observes. “But they do it German style. Which means you get three times as much.”

So, a groaning, Germanic-style farm meal it is, even though neither one of us works with sugar beets or cows.

The Drovers is exactly what we remembered. Formica tables, men in cowboy hats and seed caps, new Wrangler jeans with a crease, four generations at one table.

The list of handmade pies is still impressively long. Chicken-fried steak with white gravy; hot dinner rolls in giant pans. Google this place and you will see it described as “the best sale barn restaurant in the country,” and for good reason.

As the sun sets, we occupy our traditional counter seats. Once again, people know we’re not from around here but take no notice. We’re alone in our allotment of elbow room – a thrilling ambiance beyond the capabilities of any urban tapas joint. We eat and talk about how much better we know each other now.

We know, for instance, that we are both too full for pie.

But at 6:50 the next morning, with the morning rush long past, the waitress has time to consider our request for two pecan rolls. (What kind of people are we, that we haven’t yet gone to work?) The pecan rolls, out of the oven maybe five minutes, are nearly hubcap-sized, and unroll inwards, getting stickier as they go.

We take our time.

Robin Chotzinoff is a freelance writer who lives in Evergreen.

…

The details

Getting there: Brush is about 83 miles east of Denver via Interstate 76. Take Exit 90a. Drovers is about 1 mile east of downtown Brush, inside the High Plains Livestock Exchange at 28601 U.S. 34. Open 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday, 970-842-4218. For more information, call the city of Brush at 970-842-5001 or visit